


In This Corner...

by windfallswest



Series: Dirty Dancing [1]
Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Humor, POV First Person, Pregnancy, Rule 63, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-13 00:25:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1206019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfallswest/pseuds/windfallswest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU, plot from the end of <i>Death Masks</i>. Harry is a girl, Susan is a boy, and guess who gets pregnant this time. Warning for discussion of abortion. Ass-backwards spoilers for <i>Changes</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In This Corner...

Labour was a bitch, even without the faerie complications. I don't really have hips, to look at, but I more than clear six feet, and I'm built to scale, as it were. Good thing, too—I know it's not polite to discuss another woman's weight, but Maggie topped _nine pounds_ when she was born: it was a wonder I managed to squeeze her out at all.

Let me back up a little.

My ex came to town. We fought demons, had alarmingly intense bondage sex, turned a ritual duel into a free-for-all, and a whole bunch more scenes from a theological grab-bag of an action movie resulted in me getting shot. Anyway, I was kind of busy for a while there after I got myself upright again, and when I finally got home, I was spending my time mostly zonked out on the couch or, even better, zonked out in bed. Not down in my lab. I still wasn't feeling too good.

And then there was the thing with Marcone, which was all kinds of fucked up, but that's me and Marcone for you. And while I maybe found some time in there to think back on the steaming awesomehot sex with Hawk Rodriguez, I can maybe be forgiven for not remembering what we, er, hadn't remembered.

Anyway, it wasn't until I was knocking holes in the floor so I could Han Solo me a fallen angel that I really got back down there again. In between giving my new excavating pick some exercise, I filled Bob in a little on what had happened in the latest episode of disaster in the clusterfuck that is my life. He was unusually silent as I went on, but I figured I'd just finally come up against something that seriously intimidated him. I should have known better.

"Uh, Boss?" Bob said tentatively as I finished smoothing down the cement.

"Uh-huh?"

"Um, I don't know if you..."

I sighed. "What _is_ it, Bob?"

Bob hesitated. That was not like Bob. I looked up, starting to get a bad feeling about this.

"Somewhere in there you got laid, right?" Bob asked out of nowhere in a bad imitation of his normal cheerily prurient tone.

"Stars and stones, do we have to have this conversation again? I am not discussing my love-life with you. End of discussion."

"But Boss!" Bob objected. "Your aura—"

"It was last week," I snapped, contradicting myself. "I doubt my aura is still doing anything interesting."

" _Harry_ ," Bob shouted. "You're pregnant!"  
__ __ __

"Harry?" Bob asked after I'd let the silence go on for rather too long. "Are you all right?"

"Do you _want_ me to throw this pick at you?" I wasn't actually holding it, though, which probably undercut the threat a little.

"Wow, so hormonal already?"

I reached over and grabbed about half his reading material off his shelf with one hand, baring my teeth. "If you are fucking with me, you're going in next. I've still got concrete left."  
__ __ __

I took tests. I took kind of a lot of them. They all said the same thing. Looked like I had a bun in the oven. Hell's bells.

Now the question was, what was I going to do about it?

God, what a question.

I wasn't—I mean, I like children. I'd never really thought about having them; I'd never been in a position where it seemed possible. I wasn't in that position _now_. Children were something to think about after you were in a permanent relationship and had some money in the bank. I had neither. It had, pathetically, been more than a year since I'd had so much as a date. I couldn't even manage to locate a suitable adult person to neck with at the drive-in. I was not in a place in my life where I was prepared to take responsibility for a helpless, inarticulate, fragile miniature human being.

Not to mention the danger factor. I demonstrably couldn't even order a frigging pizza without somebody trying to blow me up. There was a war on, still, and I was at the top of the hit list. I didn't have Michael's divine baby-sitter drafting service, complete with holy backup. Talk about cheating. All I had was Bob, and there was no way I was ever going to leave a baby with Bob. No. Just, no.

There was a war on, and pregnancy, it messes you around. I didn't really know much about how hormones effected magical abilities, although obviously wizardesses got pregnant sometimes. How had my mother handled it?

So maybe it wouldn't effect my power, who knew? Would it effect my judgement? One hotheaded decision could be as fatal as a flubbed spell, as I had ample reason to know, and I'm not famous for my, ahem, extreme rationality normally. I thought back over the past week. I couldn't imagine doing all that with a kid at home. Hell's bells, one hour in the wrong part of the Nevernever and I could lose a year. Even without that, when a case came up, I was often away from my apartment for days at a time.

And then, cold as it was, there was the problem of money. People are expensive to keep alive; I barely managed it myself, and I had a lot of what I needed already: clothes, furniture, education of a sort. Kids are plain expensive. I didn't have reliable access to that kind of money, but I had enough in the bank right now to do the other thing.

_Come out and say it. To pay for an abortion._

I sat on the closed toilet lid, my face in my (recently washed) hands and let that bounce around in my head for a while. Abortion. It was the sensible thing to do, but something inside me shrank away from the thought.

It wasn't...look, I'm not political, and I'm not trying to tell anyone else how to live her life. All I know is how _I_ felt. Creating life is a profoundly transformative act, and the magical implications are just as enormous as all the others.

Life creates magic, you see. We shape and direct it with our thoughts and emotions, but we produce it with every breath. Everyone, not just wizards. Even animals, even a rockslide, creates magic, has magic working within it. That's where ley-lines come from, all that energy bubbling up and pooling and flowing, and part of why some places just _feel_ special. The ancient Japanese called them kami; Americans tend to put them on postcards. It's a part of nature, and so are human beings, even though we tend to forget that.

Humans are more complicated than just about anything else of our size: not only do we move and grow and interact, we think and build and emote. A tornado or a rainforest produces way more magical energy than a person, but it's also a lot bigger, more unwieldy.

That's how come black magicians use other people as batteries: it's like eating potato chips instead of a balanced breakfast. Actually, that's a really good metaphor. It's something that feels really good at the time, but if you do it too much, your metaphorical arteries will clog up and you die at age thirty-five looking like the Blob. Or maybe alcohol, because it's addictive and it changes you, and it eats you away from the inside out. And once you get the taste for it, it's always with you, no matter what you do.

The point being that magic is essentially a positive force. I don't really go in for religion, don't get too deep into philosophy. What I believe in is magic. Magic is a positive force. Ending the pregnancy would be by definition destroying something, and I was conflicted about it, even though it was the smart thing to do.

I called Murphy, offered to take her for lunch. Her voice on the phone and the way she looked at me when I showed up—not at Mac's, a Mexican joint over in Pilsen where I went sometimes but I wasn't _known_ —said she was afraid I was dying of plague or something after all. Geez, I knew I didn't usually pick up the tab, but was it that bad?

"Do I look that bad?" I asked, sitting down.

Murphy only gave me half a smile. "What's up?"

"Yowch."

Murphy heaved an aggravated sigh. "Do I have to drag it out of you?"

I braced myself. If there was anyone I knew who could understand, it was Murphy. Maybe not the magic stuff, but the rest of it. We were both single women with careers, fighting forces both freaky and dark. I had never been more grateful Murphy was clued in.

Murphy was staring at me. I realised I was staring at _her_ and not saying anything, winced, opened my mouth, closed it again, fiddled with the force ring on my right hand, and avoided her face.

"God, Harry, am I dying or something?"

My eyes jerked up and I looked at Murphy as close as I could to her eyes, steeling myself. I think I jumped two feet in the air when the waiter asked me what I wanted to drink. _Tequila, and keep it coming._ But no.

"Harry—" Murphy started again once he'd taken our orders.

"I'm pregnant," I blurted, looked up at her, then away.

It was Murphy's turn to gape like a fish; her mouth snapped shut on whatever sprang first to mind, then came out with, "Um, Hawk?"

I nodded miserably. "Murph, I don't know what to do."

It came out kind of plaintive, and I was a little ashamed of myself. But Murphy, god bless her, just reached across the table and took my hand.

Our food came, and Murphy told me a story about a noise complaint someone filed that had gotten shunted over to her department. It turned out the guy upstairs had been raising goats.

"Not even a little voodoo?" I asked.

"Sorry. He was making cheese. These organic people, I swear." Murphy took another bite out of her empanada. "Unless there's such a thing as cheese magic."

I shrugged. "You could use it as an ingredient in a potion, I suppose. And faeries are wild about dairy products. Milk, pizza. I haven't tried yoghurt. A faerie will do just about anything for a slice of pizza, though."

Murphy's brows shot up. "Really?"

"Well, the lesser fae. The sidhe go in more for blood." I made a face.

"Harry," Murphy said a minute later.

"Mmm?"

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I hesitated. Well, that was what I was here for, wasn't it? Murphy was giving me this look, like she was trying to be supportive but my lack of communication skills was reaching the point where she was tempted to bang one of our heads against the wall until I developed some. You gotta love Murphy; she's good people.

"What do you think?" There was that damned whine again.

"Have you told him yet?" Murphy's tone was gentle.

I shook my head. "Not until I decide...what I'm doing."

It hung there between us for a moment.

"I guess that's the question, then."

Silence.

"Have you ever...?"

Murphy had been married twice, after all. I knew both had ended in divorce, but she'd never told me why, and I hadn't asked.

Murphy looked down at her coffee. "I thought I was, once, when I was with Greg. False alarm."

"Were you...would you have kept it?"

"I was in a different situation than you are now. I had Greg." Murphy took a seep breath. "But no. I was trying for sergeant, taking night classes. Things were already...both of us were working too much. I would have caught hell from my family, if they'd found out, but no. "

The Murphy clan was Catholic, right. "Do you ever think about it?"

"Sometimes. I don't know...it wouldn't have changed anything that happened between Greg and me, not really. But that's not what you're asking." Murphy was making serious eye-contact with her coffee again. "A lot of things would have been more complicated. My career. Me and Greg. Me and Rich." Murphy made a face at that one. "Well, that might have been an improvement actually."

I chuckled dutifully.

"If I'd had a kid with Greg, it'd be a teenager now. It might be nice, to have something of him. But that's not a reason to have a child. You can't make it a...a replacement person."

"I'm not—stars and stones, Murph, I'm not trying to replace Hawk." Although it was a sort of attractive thought, leaving behind a legacy, something of me that would remember and continue, the way I remembered my dad. I hadn't thought about it quite like that, before. Of course, right now my own legacy mostly consisted of enemies. I still didn't know how big the unexploded minefield my own mother had left for me was. I frowned; Lea was just the goddamned tip of the iceberg.

"I never said you were."

I drummed my fingers on the wooden tabletop. "So you want kids now?"

"Harry." Murphy clamped down on my fidgeting hand. "This isn't about me or what I'd do. I can't make your decision for you."

I grimaced and pulled my hand away to fidget with the straw in my coke instead. "Hell's bells, Murphy, you know what the life is like. I've got demons and vampires and the whole faerie circus out gunning for me half the time. I can barely support myself, anyway. Even I can see it's a stupid idea."

Murphy sat back and picked up her coffee again. "Uh-huh?"

I glared at her. "Don't give me that. I'm not making excuses. Do you think I want to—"

"You want kids." She sounded surprised.

"Well, not right _now_. Not like _this_. I always just kind of thought, you know, eventually I'd settle down, do it right. Well, not settle-settle; wizarding isn't something I can quit. And I figured I'd have to use a turkey baster or something. I wanted my kids to have parents and a real home, though. Some measure of security." Something like what Michael had; hell, I'd be happy with a quarter of what Michael had. _All I have is a three-room apartment with a talking skull, a box of depleted uranium, a cat the size of King Kong, and a fallen angel buried in the floor._

I bit my tongue on the rest of it. I didn't want to jump feet-first into that sand-trap of a political argument. As soon as you say 'the baby's alive already', people assume you're a raving lunatic hellbent on overturning Roe v Wade. I hadn't decided what I was or wasn't going to do yet, but there was no doubt in my mind that the blastocyst or whatever was alive. Bob had said it had changed my aura, and I believed him. Magic is a creative force, and I was apparently creating.

"There are other options. Adoption." Except any child of mine stood a more than fair chance of being a wizard. I thought of my child, at the hands of another Justin. I thought of my child, being kidnapped, possessed, broken. Like hell. I'd made myself a promise, a long time ago, that no child of mine would grow up like I had.

There was only one rational choice. I met Murphy's eyes, just for a second. They were full of compassion.  
__ __ __

"Are you going to get married?"

I groaned. I hadn't really meant to tell Michael, but it had just kind of popped out. Also, I had to have some excuse for saying that Charity's pasta sauce smelled like rancid shoe-leather. Oops?

"Who to? I don't see any candidates, do you?"

"I would think to the young man who's responsible," Michael said so mildly I had to resist the urge to try and punt his head. Note: impulsive I may be, but I'm not actually stupid enough to throw down with one of the Fists of God in a fit of pique.

"First of all, I'm just as responsible for this as Hawk is." _More, if you consider the fact that I was the one in control of the enchanted binding-cord._ But it was going to take more than spaghetti to get me to admit that in this company. "Second, he's in Central America fighting vampires. Besides, I asked him already," I grumbled into my hot chocolate.

"You've told him?" Michael asked.

"Nooo, it was before," I mumbled into the rim of my mug.

"Harry," he chided.

"Look, I appreciate that you think everybody can have what you and Charity have. I wish I could, too. But Hawk and I just aren't going to happen, okay?"

Michael gave me one of his looks, the ones that made me feel like somewhere little fluffy kittens were crying. He held up one hand, palm out. "Okay. But you still need to let him know."

"Yeah, yeah." Stars and stones, was Michael not going to be able to forgive me for this. "Um, could you not tell anyone? For a while?" I slouched further in my seat and tried not to think about it. I'd found myself doing that a lot, lately, and I couldn't keep it up much longer.

"Sure, Harry," he said gently. Dammit. "If that's what you want."

I looked around Michael's house, the kid-art stuck up on the fridge, the loud, happy shouts and thumps of its creators, the way Michael and Charity looked at each other over the sticky little beasts, and felt like a worm.  
__ __ __

I was working again, which mostly meant I sat in my office for eight or so hours every day, reading nth-hand paperbacks from used book stores. I was about twice as hungry as usual, but bound and determined to ignore it. The third or tenth time I caught my hand slipping down to rest on my belly, I decided it was time to neaten up my filing system. Well, invent a filing system. Don't look at me like that; I hardly ever had trouble finding what I was looking for. It was more like re-inventing. Sort of tightening up around the edges.

This was ridiculous. I'd make the appointment tomorrow, and that would be that. Like I'd told Murphy, it was the only sensible thing to do. Tomorrow.

My office had never been neater, anyway, not that it was doing me a lot of good. I'd been neglecting my business this past year, and it showed. Why else would I go on Larry freaking Fowler again, right? Of course, I wasn't usually what you'd call swamped—just ask any PI. And I'd taken it a step further: I'd had to _specialise_. I only ever had too much to do when at least half of it was set to kill me.

Back at my apartment, I dinked around with the wards some, resetting the emergency lock-down with more than one thought about the unintended consequences the last time I used it. Bob and I talked about how they'd held up under fire and even came up with a few improvements.

The next day, I had an actual case. Nothing big, just one of the other tenants who couldn't find his keys and decided to take a chance on the resident wizard. I couldn't make it any worse, right?

As long as he didn't try and psychoanalyse me, I decided, I'd refrain from cracking wise about a shrink buying into a professional wizard. I thought that was pretty big of me. And hey, who knows? Maybe he was in such solid mental health his eyes were open to the possibility of weirdness in the world around him. Maybe I should ask: sometimes I think I could use a good shrink. The rest of the time, I'm pretty sure I'd be the ruin of a good shrink.

I found his keys, anyway. They were in an empty disposable coffee cup in the dumpster out back of the café a few blocks over where he'd eaten lunch. I had an old-fashioned sword-cane back at my apartment that Eb had helped me enspell to focus earth-magic, which as a discipline includes manipulating gravity and magnetic fields as well as throwing big chunks of stone and dirt and tectonic plate around. My old teacher, Ebenezar McCoy, is really good at that stuff. I don't hold a candle to him. Fire and air are my preferred elements, although manipulating pure energy—like the thaumaturgy I used to locate the shrink's keys—is where I really shine; but I can do a simple trick or two without a focus.

I didn't feel like digging through garbage for a half-hour's fee, so I followed the connexion, like a string, that I had hold of to the keys on the other end and murmured a few words to pull them up along that line. Softly, so I didn't accidentally hit myself in the face with the dumpster. Someday, I would take time to work on my precision and control. But I managed not to mutilate myself, so I called it a win.

I put my hand out and caught the keys. Sadly, this just looked like I was rummaging around in the dumpster to an outside observer, who in this case was my client, the shrink. He'd decided to tag along, and I hadn't stopped him. Whatever. I tossed him the keys. He handed me a twenty. Sweet. _I_ hadn't had lunch yet.

It was windy and in good Chicago style still pretty nippy in early March, but I was outside already so I tugged my duster a little tighter around myself and walked the six blocks to McAnally's. I ducked through the low door and kept ducking down the stairs: Mac's food can't be beat, but his location is not gawky-wizard friendly. I could easily reach up and touch the ceiling, if I didn't mind getting my hand chopped off by one of the thirteen fans hanging from it.

I wove my way through the thirteen tables squeezed in between the thirteen carved pillars and sat down at the bar (thirteen stools). Mac's is Accorded Neutral Ground and a hang-out for a lot of local practitioners; all the thirteens disrupt the sorts of energies from our auras that make anything technological break down and cry, or one bad mood blight an entire room. I especially appreciated this because otherwise I'd often have been that bad mood, and it would have sucked if Mac banned me for brooding. A wizards' bar that doesn't allow brooding would never get off the ground, anyway.

"Steak sandwich, Mac," I told the man behind the bar. He grunted, which was standard, and tossed some meat on the wood-burning stove. Like I said: wizard bar. It's a minor miracle he keeps the lights on and the fans going.

I watched him grab a bottle of one of his personal microbrews without actually registering anything more than that Mac makes _really good beer_ and I could sure use a drink. Er.

"Uh, just water today. Thanks," I fumbled out just before he popped the cap.

Mac raised an eyebrow at me, but wordlessly put the bottle back and drew me a glass of water. Turning down beer was not usual behaviour for me, but it was Mac's very wise policy not to ask his patrons questions.

Thank. Fucking. God.

I stared at the water Mac slid in front of me, and in an odd moment of dissonance, wondered why I'd bothered. It was stupid. I knew what decision I had to make. I'd make the appointment tomorrow, no more putting it off. Not like I couldn't find room in my schedule.

"Life's not fair, you know."

Mac glanced up at me, over his shoulder instead of in the big mirror behind the bar, since it was too dirty to reflect a clear image. I must have really had him puzzled with my teatotalling, because you don't usually get so much as a blink out of Mac with a remark as trite as that.

I took a sip of my water, then started drawing a five-pointed star inside the condensation ring where Mac had set it down. "I mean, it's not all black and white. Things don't just fit into neat little boxes. Sometimes you don't have any good choices. Then what do you do?"

I took another gulp of water. It was way less satisfying than beer.

"You make a bad choice, that's what. You make a bad choice because that's all there is, and you live with the consequences. It doesn't mean you want to do it. Or that you're _happy_ about it, or you'll feel good about it afterwards. But there you go. What—"

Mac came over and tipped my glass toward himself, making a show of bending and sniffing the contents.

I snatched it glass back. "You did _not_ accidentally pour me vodka, asshole. Besides, vodka is odourless. Some bartender you are."

Mac gave me a look that said I'd been asking for it and slid my food in front of me, through the multiplied pentacle-doodles. Suddenly, I discovered I wasn't very hungry after all.  
__ __ __

Michael just happened to be passing by my office around dinner time for the third time this week. I switched my braid back over my shoulder irritably while Michael chattered on about getting a car with airbags and how Charity handled being pregnant and getting all misty-eyed about when his oldest was a baby.

" _Michael_ ," I cut him off. "Can you just—I'm not sure I'm keeping it." Which was not at all what I'd meant to say, which was that I _wasn't_ keeping it. I'd decided.

"Harry—"

"Look, Michael, I know how you feel about it. I don't need a friggin' guilt trip, or a lecture, or to take time to consider my options. You want to know what my options are? Any kid of mine would be living under a death sentence, period. The only thing every vampire in three of the four courts would like better than killing me is getting to my family first, and sooner or later, they'd manage it. I just don't have the resources you have. Tell me, where could I leave a kid and know it was safe? I'd need a bodyguard, not a babysitter. If I had that kind of money." I ran down, staring hard at the ground, not wanting to see the look on his face.

"You might be safer out of town. In another line of work," Michael suggested.

I snorted. "Don't bet on it. I'm not running, Michael. I can't. And besides, it's too late. I could spend the rest of my life tending beehives a hundred miles from civilisation and I'd still be marked. Believe me when I say that this is the only way."

"There is always a way," said Michael quietly.

"Yeah? Tell that to Shiro."

"Harry." Michael's tone was reproachful

"If I have this baby, both of us are going to end up dead. I'm not prepared to accept that. Just leave it," I told him.

Michael paused. "I just came to ask you to have dinner with us, Harry."

"Look, you don't—thanks, but I'm not hungry. I've got stuff I need to do at home."

I fled without once looking back up at him. Nothing like a living saint to make you feel like crud. And anyway, I did have things to do at home.  
__ __ __

I'd started avoiding Bob, and so wasn't making any progress in replacing the foci I'd lost during the recent festivities. My skin crawled every time I stepped outside without my shield bracelet, and I'd been especially careful about not going out after dark.

Eventually, though, I had to bite the bullet and get back in the lab. I had a spell to do for a client, and I needed to check my silver to see if I had enough for another shield bracelet.

"Hey, boss. 好亥不見."

"I knew buying you that Japanese stuff was a mistake."

"Hey, that was _Chinese_ , I'll have you know. You have no culture."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not sure we have the same definition of 'culture', Bob. The anti-roach charm is roach poison, pandan leaves, a lightbulb, and diatomaceous earth. Right?"

Bob rocked a little on his shelf. "Yeah. You could throw in some cloves to help with the smell."

I grunted and got to work on the spell. It sounds great, doesn't it? Not glamorous, but it worked, and you'd think it would have made me a small fortune by now. I spent a lot of time trying to perfect it back when I first had the idea, but I'd never gotten it to hold for more than about a month or so. Also, the client had to leave the inscribed lightbulb filled with dead leaves and what looked like talcum powder screwed into the socket where I set the charm. And I had to set the charm to the location personally.

The real problem, though, was the smell. The charm worked great while it lasted, with enough range to chase the buggers out of an entire apartment building. But it left the whole building smelling faintly of disinfectant and glue. One failed test run had resulted in everybody in Billy and Georgia's building getting high off non-existent fumes. Oops.

I was, predictably, scratching tiny runes into the glass of the lightbulb when Bob said, "Have your boobs gotten any bigger yet?"

"Stars and sky!" My hand jerked, and I bent to examine the surface, checking to make sure I hadn't gouged any unintended marks. "That's none of your business!"

"You don't have to be embarrassed, Harry. Lots of women take a few kids to fill out," Bob continued blithely.

"I'm not having a—a kid," I snapped. "The pregnancy. I'm not going through with it."

"Really, Harry? I thought you—"

"Shut it, Bob," I grated between clenched teeth.

"Sheesh, guess I hit a nerve. Look, how was I supposed to know? You're still walking around with your aura all glowy," Bob said sulkily.

Of the two of us, I really thought I was the one with more right to be sulky. "I've been busy."

"Okay," Bob agreed quickly in a small voice.

Dammit, I wasn't being unreasonable. Bob pried into my personal life, and I shut him down. This was the order of things. I went back to the squeaky process of carving glass.

"You know," Bob interrupted me. My head snapped up and he rushed on, "I could make you a potion. For, you know. Since you haven't had the time."

My jaw hung open. It always floored me when the little amoral pervert showed he cared. I swallowed.

"Uh, thanks Bob. Just let me finish up here."

"Sure thing, boss."

I could just have stopped the charm and picked up again while the potion stewed, but I didn't want to chance the roach poison getting into anything I was going to drink. So I finished prepping the charm, put everything away, and washed my hands and work surface carefully. Bob rattled off the recipe and I mixed the ingredients—unsurprisingly, the soured milk wasn't a problem.

The potion went on to simmer; it would take a while to cook. Instead of sitting there and watching it like a deer in the headlights, I asked Bob where my scrap silver and silver chain were and started working up a new shield bracelet. I'd need more silver before I could finish it, but it was demanding, finicky work and just what I needed to distract me right now.

"Okay, boss," Bob interrupted my concentration again, although this time I didn't startle. The work had been going slower and slower this past half hour, until I'd stopped even pretending.

I turned to the potion, bubbling happily, and gathered my energy and will to pour into it, fusing ingredients and metaphor into a suspension of magic. I drew in my focus, ready to direct the accumulated force of my churning emotions.

I.

"Uh, boss?"

I stared at the potion, the increasingly rancid smell of hot, sour milk in my nostrils.

"You know, this isn't really the sort of magic you want to risk getting—Harry? Harry, are you okay? You're not being cursed; I could tell. Oh, empty night this is not in my job description."

I tried to choke back the sobs, but then I wasn't breathing. I buried my face in my hands and gasped for breath about half as often as I needed it, curling protectively around my stomach.

Bob stopped panicking when I stood up. It took me two tries before I could make myself pick up the overcooked potion, even with hot-pads. I took it upstairs and dumped it down the kitchen sink. Then I picked up the phone.

You can't do anything with magic that you don't really believe in.

"I need you to come over right now."

"Uh, who is this?" The voice on the other end of the line was male, but an octave or so too high.

I ran a hand through my hair, dislodging some of it from the braid I'd put it in this morning. "Cr—Daniel? Matt? It's Harry Dresden. Is your dad there?"

There was some thumping and jostling on the other end of the line, and then an operatic shout of _DAD!_ that cracked in the middle.

I winced. "I must be out of my mind."

More percussive noises, and something that might have been a blender. Then another voice, lower and a little distracted, came on. "Hello?"

"I need to borrow a handkerchief," I told him. "How soon can you be here?"

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. "Half an hour."

Twenty-five minutes later, Michael knocked on my door. I had to drop my pick and scramble up the ladder to let him in. He followed me down to the lab and watched me finish digging up Lasciel's coin. Miraculously, Bob said almost nothing. Michael said even less.

Finally, I exposed the coin and the little steel circle around it. Michael pulled an embroidered handkerchief from his pocket and wordlessly bent to wrap the tarnished coin in it.

I watched his face, looking for contempt, disappointment, signs he was going for his sword to complete the Denarian-defusing process. Michael's expression was thoughtful and a little worried.

"Thanks," I said at last.

Michael nodded.

I cleared my throat. "Can't have one of those in the house with a kid, y'know?"

Michael smiled a little, tucking handkerchief and coin into his pocket. "No, can't have that."

"You fink. You knew, didn't you? How did you know? Why didn't you...?"

"Our purpose as Knights of the Cross is to save the Denarians, not kill them. I'm here to help you, Harriet."

"Ugh, don't call me that." No one calls me Harriet. Eb calls me Hess. Even Marcone had so far never tried to call me Harriet, or I really would have killed him.

Michael's smile flashed extra brightly for a second. Then he sobered. "There's more. It's good that you gave up the coin of your own free will; but when you touched it, the Fallen left an imprint on you."

My blood went cold. "Imprint?"

Michael nodded. "A shadow, in your mind. It will try to tempt you into taking up the coin."

"But it's gone now, right? I mean, I gave the thing up. You guys lock it in some vault full of holy wards or something and that's that. I mean, I couldn't get it out of there even if I wanted to, so what's the point?"

Michael's expression was grim. "I'm afraid that's not how it works. The only way I know of for you to get rid of the shadow is to set aside your power as well. Stop using magic."

"The hell you say."

"Harry, your child—" Michael began, his voice gentle but passionate.

"—Will need all the protection I can muster. And don't you dare suggest I run away again. I won't live like that. All my other responsibilities don't just disappear because my uterus is occupied. I am still who I always was." I crossed my arms and stuck my chin out stubbornly.

I could give up my magic. I could stop using it, and it would shrivel away and die. I could even disappear into whatever protective custody the Church had set up for people like the girl Lydia we'd rescued from Kravos and then, a couple months later, from Kravos' ghost.

I could do it. Maybe. But all I've ever been, all I've ever wanted from life, is magic. The kind my dad gave people when I was a kid, and then the other kind once Justin adopted me. I'd never really managed to convince Michael that magic isn't unnatural and generally bad for you. Magic is the energy of creation. It's as natural as sunrise and storms, as tides and mountains. Magic is _life_. Magic is _my_ life. There is a lot of it in me; and if I let it drain away, I didn't think there would be much left except an empty husk.

And, too, there were people here who depended on me. Murphy, Michael himself, the Alphas, the handful of small-time practitioners I'd helped get a handle on their powers. Sure, I'd been ignoring them for the past year or so; I can make crappy decisions like everybody else. I'd let them down; I didn't want to keep doing it.

Michael looked at my face and sighed. "I take it it hasn't started talking to you yet."

"Uh, no?" Not so far as I knew. Now wasn't that an unsettling thought? "Uh, what exactly can this thing do inside my head? There are limits, right?" A horrible thought hit me. "It can't touch the baby, can it?"

"I don't know. I've never heard of anybody being in your exact circumstances; of course, Nicodemus has destroyed almost all the records from more than a few centuries ago." Michael didn't look like he was happy with that answer, either. "You were the one who picked it up; it should have only as much power as you allow it. But Harry, Lasciel is a deceiver, a seducer. It will know what to offer you, how to make itself appealing. It's had thousands of years of experience manipulating human nature."

"Stronger men than I?" I was trying for flippancy, but it flew wide of the mark.

"This isn't just another petty, malicious spirit you can conjure," Michael warned.

"Hey!" Bob objected.

"Bob, shush," I told the skull. I turned back to Michael. "I've had demons try to get in my head before." Justin hadn't, technically, been a demon. He'd been more than close enough from where I stood, though.

Michael followed me up the ladder. He stopped at the front door; he was still wearing his serious face. "You're a good woman, Harry. We'll be here for you, if you need, or want, our help."

"Uh, thanks." I swallowed something distinctly lumpish in my throat.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"I'd want you to," I blurted out, anticipating what had put that pained look on his face. "If—if it got to me. I'd want you to take me out. And, um, take care of my child. Find it somewhere safe."

Michael blinked, clearly surprised. "Never doubt it. You have my word. I would care for your child as one of my own."

"Oh," I said, profoundly moved. I wasn't, really wasn't going to start crying again.

"Ah, I was actually going to ask you if you'd mind my telling Charity now," Michael said a little sheepishly.

"Oh. No wonder you looked like you were about to jump into a sewer. I...guess not? She's not going to start introducing me to Nice Church Boys, is she?"

Michael laughed. "Don't take this the wrong way, Harry; but I think she'd be afraid you'd be a bad influence."  
__ __ __

Oddly, my life picked up again around this monumental change. Michael, Sanya, and whatever angels watched over them had recovered the Swords, but Nicodemus had broken my blasting rod, in addition to apparently lifting my shield bracelet when he'd had me strung up down in Undertown—I'd never thought I'd meet someone who had a less subtle recruitment pitch than John Marcone. Some people probably think being tied down and stripped naked is the ultimate in making you feel physically exposed and vulnerable; but believe you me, there is nothing like waking up in formalwear and realising a demon has removed your underwear while you were unconscious. And I say this having also been strung up naked from my wrists, although I was sort of asking for it that time. For certain values of 'asking'.

In hindsight, I had really a lot of reasons to be thankful Shiro found me when he did. And—did what he did.

Ahem. As I was saying, the rod alone was better than two weeks' work to replace, and now more than ever I didn't want to be walking around at less than full strength. I had my staff, still, but even vanilla mortals look at _that_ sideways.

Michael and Charity insisted on feeding me real food about three times as often as I'd been used to getting it. I really didn't understand where I stood with Charity: she still lectured me about my behaviour with regards to everything from getting pregnant outside of wedlock ( _wedlock_ ) to getting her husband hurt, again; but she also insisted on serving me double portions and making sure I drank herbal tea, not coffee. (I am taller than Charity. Hell, I'm practically taller than her husband. I seriously think I could have pumped the stuff via IV and the kid would still not have come out a dwarf.) The first time I went over after Michael told them, I found myself surrounded by a hip-high throng of astonished kids. I absolutely did not cry at all then, either. Charity was slicing onions in the kitchen; that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The first thing I did, though, was climb back down into my lab and have Bob take a really good, long look at my aura. I let him out of the skull to do it, and he swirled busily around me in a manner that reminded me a little too much of being inside a house fire.

"Well?" I asked.

"There's definitely something in there," Bob said, still circling.

"In _where_?"

"Your head. Aside from you, I mean. I'd never want to imply that there wasn't already—"

" _Bob_. Has it touched. Anything. Else?"

"Nope, don't think so. The womb is a pretty serious barrier. Sort of a natural ward. It's really very interesting; the first wizards were women, you know. Men just took it over later and turned it into a measuring contest—"

"Are you sure?" I cut him off.

"Your daughter is gestating peacefully. As for your other passenger, well, I guess it's just waiting for the right moment."

"Well, isn't that a cheery thought?" I huffed a sigh and looked with disfavour at the hole inside my summoning circle. I really didn't feel like more manual labour today, but experience has taught me that you never know when you'll need one in a hurry, so I might as well fix it—

"Did you say daughter? You can tell?"

"Duh. She's a nice little blastocyst, snuggled up on the right rear—"

"Do not finish that sentence. You are still prohibited from mentioning those parts of my anatomy," I reminded Bob. Firmly.

"Aw, but _boss_ —"

"Do you really want to annoy me while I'm hauling out the concrete?" I asked him.

I called Eb, whom I had at least refrained from bothering during my period of panicked dithering at more or less everyone I knew. He offered to let me stay with him at Hog Hollow, but I meant what I'd said to Michael: it wasn't in me to run and hide, any more than it was in me to give up on my little girl.

I don't blame my parents, not really. It's not their fault they died. It sucks, but I finally figured out it's not fair to blame them for something they couldn't control. I knew my dad, and I loved him. He made sure I knew them both, that we never left mom behind. And because of that, I like to think I haven't left him behind either. Both of my parents are still with me, in a peculiar way.

But it still isn't the same as having someone to hold you when you're hurt or scared. Someone to share your home with, a real, breathing presence. Someone to whom you will always be connected, even when you fight, even when you're far away, not because of your choices, just because of who you are.

I'd had a little of that with Hawk, who'd taken me as I was and loved me the way I loved him, even if we never said it until it was too late. But even when we'd been lovers, we hadn't been...close. We had our own lives, our own spaces. I'd like to think it would have grown into something more, but we'll never know now, will we?

I sent a message to Hawk's drop address asking him how to get a seriously confidential message to him. I didn't think me getting knocked up would stay a secret forever, but we both had enough enemies it was worth being cautious. I thought I knew what Hawk's decision would be, but he ought to know, and our daughter—stars and stones, our _daughter_ —deserved for me to try, anyway.

__ __ __

I felt a lot better with my shield bracelet back on and my blasting rod hanging in my duster. I still needed to replace the .44 old Nicky had knocked out of my hand and into the cornfields, but at least I had my shotgun. Silver linings.

Since I had a little cash, at least until I buckled down and got a lawyer to defend me against, of all things, Larry Fowler, I beefed up my wards, and not just the ones around my own apartment. In the past year or so, I'd put wards around the entire boarding house. After all, fires, as I have reason to know, spread. Not to mention it would be really lousy thanks to Mrs Spunklecrief if I let her get blown up by somebody aiming at me.

Speaking of aim, Bob and I sketched out some protective sigils to lay on my leather duster. I inked them on with a tattoo needle, then juiced the whole thing up. Bob wanted me to test it by having Murphy shoot me while I wore it, but I declined.

Unfortunately, we got the duster finished about a week too late. Or a month and a week, depending on how you're counting.

But let me skip ahead. It was about a month and a week after Bob and I had finished designing the wards for my duster. I was on a mission of mercy, tracking down a library book that had fallen out of Andi's bag when she'd had to transform in a hurry the night before. She needed to cite it for a paper she was writing, apparently. College kids.

I was already looking ahead to collected babysitting IOUs, so I'd agreed to help her out. Actually, the Alphas all thought it was both fantastic and hilarious. They'd smelled it on me the first time I came by after the whole Denarian fiasco. Supersenses. Seriously, my friends are all weird.

The tracking spell was leading me down the Midway Plaisance, this weird park like an overgrown median strip that runs along the southern edge of the UChicago campus between the main quad and all the grad school buildings. There were sports fields sunken down in the middle; I was passing an open-air ice rink, in this season pulling double duty as three basketball courts. I was on the other side of a modernistically geometrical garden from where I was walking, the stadium lights just visible through the trees.

I passed a bus going in the opposite direction and its marquee flickered. I winced; my radius of magical disturbance had been expanding. As the bus pulled out, a man crossed the street, coming towards me. I didn't let go of the tracking spell, but I did shake out my shield bracelet and watch the fellow out the corner of my eye. Most supernatural beings wouldn't risk a confrontation in public in daylight, even the ones who don't mind going out in it in the first place. It wouldn't be the first time, though.

The only thing supernatural, it turned out, was my bad luck. The man resolved into a tall, athletic figure in an expensive grey pinstripe suit that wasn't a stitch out of place exiting one of the most prestigious law schools in the country. He had dark hair, silvering at the temples, and I knew before I saw them that his eyes were the green of old money.

"Miss Dresden," said John Marcone, "fancy meeting you here."

"Can we do this while we walk, Marcone? I've got a spell going." I said it a little abstractedly, recovering the focus that had begun to fray. It was hard enough doing this with the kid turning summersaults on my pancreas.

"Of course." Marcone fell in beside me, easily matching my somewhat reduced pace. "I'd hate to inter—Harry! You're pregnant!"

_Ha_ , Marcone didn't know everything after all. "Don't call me Harry. Excellent powers of deduction there, by the way. I'm due in December; you can put that in the disturbing and possibly actionable stalker-file you keep on me."

"You've seen Mister Rodriguez since the events of last winter, then," Marcone said, clearly doing the math.

"Nah, just got stuck dicking around in Faerie. Ah-ha!" I'd been ignoring the slight northward pull on the spell, since I'd discovered earlier that it straightened out as soon as I took about a half a step to my right; and at six months pregnant even my anti-establishment tendencies didn't extend to ignoring a perfectly good sidewalk.

I stepped off it now and onto the grass, squatting down to rifle through the low, leafy, shrub-like things. "Ha. Got it."

I straightened up a little awkwardly, between my stomach and Andi's book, the latter being almost as large as the former. If I may say, I do think I carried it well, even that far along. I've always been skinny and too tall, except when I was a little kid and I was skinny and too short. My metabolism is the real reason it occasionally seems that Murphy has it out for me, by the way. I'd been having an increasing amount of trouble affording the inflated grocery bills it was taking to stave off seeming starvation. I maintain that it was really big (no pun intended) of Murphy to keep throwing me cases even though I was eating approximately her bodyweight every day and only expanding incrementally at the waist.

I twitched my skirt around. All those increments had started adding up, though. I hate skirts most of the time: they cost too much and they don't hold up and they get in the way. But they just don't make maternity pants for six and a half foot tall women. Actually, they don't make pants at all for six and a half foot tall women: I've been wearing men's jeans since I was in high school. Charity had donated some of her old things to me, which was a life-saver because I'd had to buy the leggings to go under them outright, plus new bras when my boobs started ballooning out. Bob was being disturbingly helpful lately.

I missed my pants. I'm not a purse girl unless I'm trying to hide something kind of big, so I like jeans with pockets that are actually designed to hold things. It was a good thing my duster was more or less made of pockets, or I'd have run out of room. For a while, I'd been able to get away with just popping the button on my jeans and letting the zipper down halfway, but that look doesn't inspire clients with boundless confidence in my professionalism. So skirts it was, and a couple dresses, with leggings underneath to keep me from freezing to death as it got chillier.

I looked back over my shoulder to find Marcone watching me with the sort of attention he usually employed about ten hours before my life got really hairy. He always made a point of looking me in the eye, even though it meant looking up—Murphy had forgiven me for being so unnaturally fucking tall the first time she saw me face to face with Marcone and realised I had a couple inches on the son of a bitch. No lie. When Marcone paid that much attention to the rest of me, it meant he was leading up to something.

I clomped back to the cement. Marcone's predatory gaze shifted to watch...my stomach. "Don't tell me—you want to be her godfather."

"So you're having a girl." Marcone smiled a little, just enough to wrinkle up his smile lines and crow's feet, giving him that fatherly, all-American air that put people so at ease before he had them shot in the head; but his eyes said he was doing it because it annoyed me.

I scowled and started walking again, curious how long I could run him around the South Side before he either caught wise or I had to stop to pee. No way was I taking him right up to Andi's door, just on principle. At least the kid was settling down.

"Did you want something, Marcone? God knows I'd hate to save you the aggravation on tracking me down."

"Shall we play hide-and-go-seek? I assure you, I was merely relieved to see you returned from your extended absence. You were in the Nevernever, you say?" Marcone did politely inquiring very well, with his coat over his arm in case the mild October day decided to turn. "I trust from your presence here, producing historical tomes from under plant-life, you are not expecting mayhem on an immediate and wide-spread scale."

"No-one expects the Unseelie Incursion," I said brightly, because I could be petty, too. I wondered briefly what kind of aneurism Marcone would have if Chicago disappeared for a couple hours.

"I could scarcely believe my ears when the reports told me you were, if you'll pardon me, keeping a low profile. I believe now I understand rather better."

I stopped and stared at him. "Are you trying to butter me up, Marcone?" That wasn't just a bad pun; that was a _horrible_ pun. I started looking around for lycanthropes and psychotic FBI agents.

Marcone's eyes flicked over my distinctly un-low profile. Hell's bells, he was getting acquisitive again, wasn't he? I resisted the urge to tell Marcone that I already had a devil on my shoulder.

"It honestly hadn't occurred to me," Marcone averred, eyes wide. "But I suppose a flexible schedule and comprehensive health-care might be convenient to you in your current circumstances. And a generous salary, of course."

"What a lovely long leash," I said acidly. "Sorry, John; I enjoy pissing on the flowers too much."

Marcone twitched the way he almost never did anymore when I used him first name. "Of course; I should have known your Mister Rodriguez would be providing for you."

"Cheap shot, Marcone. So far as I know, you don't have 'vampire hunter' on your résumé. 'Werewolf bait', now..."

"You disappoint me, Harry." Everything about Marcone had suddenly gone sharp. "I had hoped we'd come further."

"I'll admit that this is the most blatant you've ever been about implying I need a big, strong man to look after me," I sneered.

Marcone actually blinked. His face went abruptly blank and pointed straight ahead; I could almost see the gears turning behind it. Stars, had I actually just called John Marcone on something and he _listened_?

Wait, had I just called Marcone on a reaction he hadn't thought out ten steps ahead? Stars and stones.

"I apologise," Marcone said, further blowing my mind. "It was not my intention to imply any slight on your capabilities, Miss Dresden. I merely wished to extend an offer of assistance in what would constitute, for anyone, difficult circumstances."

"Wait a minute. You really do want to be her godfather!"

Marcone just smiled at me with his tiger's eyes. "I'll leave you to your walking tour of Washington Park. Who knows? Perhaps you'll find a treatise on game theory under a bush. A pleasure as always."

Someone, I assumed it was Hendricks, had been tailing us on the other side of the Midway in a dark grey sedan with tinted windows. I waited until Marcone had gotten in and they'd driven away before cutting left and making my way to Andi's apartment.

"He wants you, you know," a voice said in my ear as I jaywalked.

"Not news," I growled. A couple of college kids gave me a double-take. Talking to yourself while being pregnant and wearing a big, black coat will have that effect, although Hyde Park is a bit more forgiving about that sort of oddity than your usual Chicago neighbourhood.

"You think he's attractive, too."

"Did I ask for your opinion? Get back in your box," I told Lasciel's shadow. John Marcone's sexy voice did not, now or in the past, effect my decision-making process. I mean, there was getting fucked, and then there was getting fucked over. Marcone didn't want my body. He wanted to own me the same way my hitchhiker did. The main difference between the two was that when I saw Lasciel, I was hallucinating and when I saw Marcone, I was only wishing I was.

Andi thanked me effusively for the book, but only spent a minute cooing over my stomach before retreating back into her study-cave. I still found it astounding how otherwise rational human beings could be transformed into gibbering half-wits by an only indirectly-perceptible foetus. Myself included. I wondered how much worse the effect would be once I had an actual baby.

Marcy, who was still living with Andi after the breakup, made me sit and put my feet up and got me a glass of water. She had the story of where I'd been last month out of me. I regaled her with tales of glorious adventure for a while, peed again (you are always peeing when you're pregnant), then headed back to the office.

It wasn't a long story. What happened was, Murphy gave me a call about some property damage, people's yards getting dug up, a couple of dogs disappearing. I called up Toot-toot and got down to cases.

Turns out it was a wyldfae. I ended up chasing it into the Nevernever and teaching it a lesson about respecting personal property. Toot led me in and back out again, but somewhere along the way we must have crossed a patch of seriously slow time because I left in August, and when I got back it was almost October.

Luckily, I had let Mister out before I left. Murphy all but decked me when I got back, which meant she'd been worried, even though I'd told Bob where I was going and Murphy had a key and an amulet to get her into my place.

Sadly, that was not the last I heard about it.

It also wasn't the last I heard from Marcone.

The next three months went, briefly, like this:

"Marcone, what is this?"

"A rather abrupt telephone conversation, Miss Dresden. Or did you mean something else?"

"You sent me a bush."

"What makes you think I had anything to do with your office's horticultural contents?"

"One, it was waiting for me on my desk inside my locked office this morning. Two, there's a book underneath it."

"Really?"

"It's a book on parenting."

"How appropriate."

"Three, the thing the book is under is a bush."

"A bonsai tree, in point of fact. The Japanese regard their cultivation as a meditative exercise in patience."

"I'll be sure to contemplate that while I'm burning it for firewood."  
__ __ __

"Marcone, I told you to stop sending me things. In case you missed it the last three hundred times: You. Can't. Buy. Me."

"If I had sent anything, Harry, it would simply be a gift between friends."

"We're not friends, _John_."

"Then how would you define our relationship?"

"We don't have a relationship!"

"...I see. I wouldn't burn the cushion, if I were you. The fumes from synthetics are usually noxious."

"Thanks for the tip. I'll make sure the wind's blowing in your direction first."  
__ __ __

"I had my locks changed."

"Yes, it's quite good work. I've contracted with the same company myself."  
__ __ __

"Marcone, I am not going to help any more of your goons find their lucky socks."  
__ __ __

"What do you mean, you've lost your car keys?"

"I would think that would be obvious," Marcone said irritably.

"Mm, nah. Not buying it. You have as many cars as you have goons to drive them."

Marcone had caught me on the street again, confirming everything I'd ever said about his being a maladjusted stalker-type. It was probably some sort of cosmic message that he'd found me while I was waiting for Michael to pick me up. Michael would bitch at me for waiting out of doors, but unless I'm head-down in magical research (which, okay, happens pretty frequently), I don't really like to be cooped up inside all the time. That's one of the advantages of my line of work: interesting places and interesting people.

And I was about to get cooped up for probably several days. That was why Michael was picking me up: I was almost due, and Charity was supposed to deliver the baby. They'd tried to talk me into a hospital, but my effect on technology always got worse when I was stressed. This past month or so, the range at which I'd hex a cellphone or a streetlamp had about doubled. The Beetle was always in the shop. At this rate, I'd end up taking out whatever wing of the hospital they stuck me in.

I'd put in a half-day at the office, waiting for a client to show up for her dream-catcher and sitting in one of my ratty armchairs with my feet up on my desk, wishing I hadn't donated Marcone's back-support cushion to the Good Will. The dream-catcher had been a delicate piece of magic and outside my usual range; I was pretty proud of pulling it off and eager to see how it worked. The task had been rendered even more challenging by the fact that the baby kicked me in the liver every time I did magic. There was no way she wasn't going to be a wizard, was there? The thought was either wonderful or terrifying. I'd sat for a full ten minutes trying to decide which before Bob had interrupted to ask me if I was all right.

I peered around Marcone, up the street: no sign of Michael's truck. Damn.

"Expecting someone?"

I scowled. "None of your business. This is harassment, you know."

"I really have lost my car keys," Marcone objected.

I rolled my eyes. "Really? That's what you're going with? Fine. I'll get you your stupid keys, just to get rid of you; but I'm not touching your filthy money. Where's your car?"

"This way."

Marcone put a hand on the aching small of my back to steer me. It's not that I don't appreciate a little chivalry—what can I say? I'm a bad feminist; odd as it seems, sometimes I like to be treated like a lady—but Marcone was not my freaking boyfriend. I did not want his hands on me. I shrugged him off, lumbering as briskly as I could manage. Like I really needed to feel larger and more awkward even than I normally did.

"This isn't up to your usual standards, you know."

"I'm so terribly sorry to disappoint," Marcone said drily.

"I mean, car keys? Lucky socks?" If Marcone thought he'd fool me with those, I was genuinely insulted.

"I'm afraid certain of my employees have become somewhat superstitious. I can't imagine why."

I resisted the urge to rub my back; now Marcone had drawn attention to it, it had started complaining again. But Marcone could smell weakness like blood in the water. Thankfully, what I mostly felt was irritated.

We turned the corner, and Marcone stopped short. There was a tension to his stillness that had me shelving my next cutting remark and reaching around my protruding belly and into the folds of my duster for my blasting rod. My eyes fixed on a patch of gouged asphalt next to the sidewalk.

"Ah. It appears I have also misplaced my car."

I didn't quite manage to stifle a groan. "You don't have a dog, do you Marcone?"

A spine-chilling, snuffling sound like laughter drifted out of the shadows.  
__ __ __

Yeah, okay, so that hadn't been as done as I thought. I guess yoinking me through the time-stream and ungagging the fallen angel in my head just hadn't been enough.

We chased the wyldfae to Undertown—and aren't we all glad Gentleman Johnny knows about _that_ now? Anyway, I couldn't shake Marcone, and when Maeve moved the party to the Nevernever he tagged along. We sort of stumbled over Maeve in a way that made it clear that, while butter wouldn't melt in her mouth (actually not that useful a metaphor in her case), she was behind it all. Fucking faeries.

The only good thing about all the plausible deniability was that I didn't have to go toe-to-toe with another Faerie Queen. Just a wyldfae with too many appendages and a really twisted sense of humour.

At first I didn't pay any attention to it, because I was kind of busy blasting the crap out of the tentacle thing. Then, running from that pack of hairy, toothy, snarly things we just happened to bump into on out way out, I thought for a second it was a cramp.

"Oh, hell's bells. Marcone!" I grabbed him by the sleeve of his wool coat. With the other arm, he was slashing at one of the beasties with a steel knife. "C'mon, time to go!"

Let me just say this: John Marcone in action is a sight to see. I mean, he spends a lot of time playing the respectable, paper-pushing corporate mogul, wearing nice suits and going to charity functions, but it's a sham. Everybody's heard the rumours about how he is with a knife; I've seen him hit an inch-thick rope with nothing to aim by but moonlight, while suspended over a pit, with only one arm free, waiting for a monster werewolf to snap him up like a big-mouth bass chomping a worm on a hook.

Marcone moved like a tiger, fast, graceful in the economy of his movement, and utterly confident. He was tangling with fae-beasts, creatures of the Nevernever of unknown intelligence and power, moving more quickly than I would have thought possible for a vanilla mortal. Whatever those things were, they didn't like Marcone's steel knives, and he was using that advantage ruthlessly. This, I knew, was his element; something I'd glimpsed in his soul but hardly ever witnessed. As I watched, he sacrificed one of his knives to drive the most slavering of the fangy things back, his green eyes alight.

Let's just say I had more than one reason to be wary of Marcone.

We ran after the twinkling light of the guide Toot-toot had dispatched to me—he was getting to be a pretty big noise among Chicago's little folk—and turning every few minutes to fight a rear-guard action. Once, a really bad contraction hit me and I froze, almost doubling over. Marcone asked me if I was okay—I don't think I'll ever forget the fear pumping off him or the wild look in his eyes.

"I am not—having my kid—in fucking—Faerie," I ground out, and forced my legs to start moving again.

When Toot's guide circled, signalling a safe Way out, I put my head down and put on as much speed as I could, supporting my distended belly with the hand not wielding my blasting rod. I tore a hole in the barrier between the worlds without so much as a second thought for where it would open out.

The snarly creatures were right on our heels, threatening to drag us down. The strain of doing so much magic in the Nevernever was telling on me, but I dug down into my anger and fear, mining my ungodly terror for the power to hold them off. Another contraction rippled through me, and I fought my body's demands to stop and push.

I screamed—at our attackers and whatever queens might be listening and Faerie itself and myself and the baby trying to ram her way out of me—and called the wind, pushing us forward and them back.

Marcone and I sailed through the open portal, hit the ground, and rolled.

"Gya—occluderum!" I gasped, sealing the Way behind us and collapsing on the forest floor.

Wait, what?  
__ __ __

"My phone is completely dead."

Marcone was looking at the little machine with an expression that was equal parts annoyed and bemused.

"Fried?" I panted. I was still lying in the snow at the other side of the clearing where we'd come out, trying to remember how to make my lungs reinflate.

"No. It seems it continued searching for a signal while we were in the Nevernever and ran out of batteries."

My shoulders started shaking with weak, crackling laughter.

Marcone frowned. "I fail to see what you could possibly find entertaining in this situation."

I stopped snickering long enough to say, "My water just broke."

Right, so, back where we started: labour was a bitch. I was stranded outdoors fuck knows where, the middle of some forest, with snow on the ground and John Marcone staring up my vagina. Of all the people I did not want to be on my back for, of all the people I _did not want touching me there_ , Gentleman John Marcone was damned close to topping the list, pulling ahead of vampires for the moment, because at least most vampires come with built-in painkillers.

_I could—_ I heard Lasciel start.

"Don't even think about it," I snapped.

Marcone looked at me curiously.

"Never _mind_ , you goddamned motherfucking sonuvabitch," I snarled.

He handled it pretty well, but I could definitely see him cracking around the edges. I took a perverse satisfaction in it; there was very, very little to smile about that night.

I was supposed to have a midwife. I was supposed to have a bed, possibly drugs, drugs would be _fantastic_ right about now, and how about a roof? walls? I was lying on my duster in the dirt next to a bonfire Marcone had fucking had to light himself, because despite all the spell-slinging I'd already done that night, my labour-pains completely incinerated the first one we'd tried to build. I was still working on my theories about gestation and magic-generation, but either way that was kind of impressive. The blackened-glass crater made a really dry fire-pit for the next one, though.

On the plus side, I felt way less bad about cussing out Gentleman Johnny and thirty generations of his ancestors than I would Charity. I think it's a little unreasonable to expect circumspection from a woman in labour, but Charity Carpenter had not mellowed that much in her attitude toward me. At about generation eight, Marcone started swearing back at me, which I really appreciated. It's not nearly as satisfying to scream at someone who insists on being nice to you the whole time.

The Great Oracle Television tells us that giving birth hurts, and it does not lie. But it does leave out a lot of other gross stuff, which for all our sakes I am also going to omit. One witness with that seared into his brain is enough, thanks. Let's just say that after I pushed, squeezed, and screamed Maggie out (after which she took over the screaming, which was fine since I was wiped) and Marcone cut the cord with his fighting knife, the one he'd been jabbing into monstrous eyesockets and whatnot all night—he did wave it around in the fire to cauterise it first, at least—I rolled off my duster and told Marcone to throw the whole thing in the fire to burn clean.

I just lay there, staring up at the stars like I had a million times before, the same crystal clarity I remembered—

"Hey!"

Marcone, who had started staring at the baby like he wasn't actually sure what it was—it had been a long day for both of us—jerked visibly and went for his knife again. I shook my head.

I remembered. Not just these stars, this sky, but the feel of the land around me, the way the air moved in these mountains, how the trees whispered to one another, ash, hickory, pine, oak.

"I know where we are."

Marcone blinked. "And where would that be?" From the tone of his voice, he was expecting more swearing.

"Give me my daughter first," I demanded.

Marcone disappeared the knife once more and knelt down next to me. He handed the baby over almost reverently, his hands—as big as mine and more powerfully built—somehow gentle. I caught a suspiciously human light in his eye as he did it, but I looked away quickly.

"Maggie," I said. Margaret Dorothy Ellinor Dresden. Family tradition. _Momma's got you, baby girl. Now and always._

"Your mother's name," Marcone murmured approval.

I glared at him because one, Marcone was still a stalker and I still didn't like it and he needed to be reminded and take heed; and two, like hell I needed his approval. But I couldn't sustain an interest in Marcone right then; my attention slid back to Maggie with a force that was almost magnetic. Her eyes and hair—that was a lot of hair! was she supposed to have that much hair?—were dark; her colour was hard to tell in the firelight, but she looked kind of squished. Marcone had wrapped her in his coat, which had acquired a few holes during our night's entertainment but was clean-ish now the ectoplasm had had a chance to evaporate.

Maggie let out a noise so loud I knew she'd be a wizard because it defied all the laws of physics for something so small to get up that kind of volume. Had she seemed big before? She was tiny. I winced. Marcone chuckled.

The last thing I wanted to do right then was stay conscious, and the second-to-last thing I wanted to do was move; but after I had a few minutes to recover I managed both. My duster was nice and toasty, at least.

Which is how I ended up having to explain to Eb how I'd come to find myself on his doorstep around dawn with a skirt that kept trying to fall off, a baby, and an astonishingly filthy mob boss.  
__ __ __

Eb was waiting for us at the door. "Wards told me you'd come 'round. Happy Solstice, Hess."

It had been December twentieth when we'd retreated to the Nevernever eighteen hours ago.

"FUCKING FAERIES," I cursed them all. Loudly.

"Hess?" Eb looked concerned.

I pulled myself together. "Sorry, sir."

Much as I have to say about Marcone—and if you say I've said plenty already, well, I'll say that's just a drop in the bucket—he's pretty sturdy. This, though, was apparently too much for him. He frankly boggled at me. I mean flat-out gaped, like I'd just slapped him in the mouth with a haddock. It was kind of nice. Sadly, I was too exhausted to enjoy it properly. It still gives me a warm feeling on cold nights, though.

"Harry—" _Miss Dresden_ , I hissed, maybe irrationally, but I was worn pretty thin, too, "—over the course of our association, I have heard you disrespect officers of the law, rabid werewolves, fallen angels, a Valkyrie, and, most recently, a Queen of Faerie. I didn't think that word was in your vocabulary.

"Some of those are by definition _women_ , John."

Ebenezar was listening with thinly-veiled amusement. "I see Hess has brought out her company manners for you, young man. You going to introduce us, girl?"

I heaved a long-suffering sigh. "I'd think you'd be more interested in meeting my daughter than making up to the criminal element, sir."

Ebenezar blinked, finally seeming to register that the bulge under my coat was too high up to be my pregnancy-swollen belly.

"Eb, meet Maggie. I'd introduce you properly, but she's decided it's breakfast time." I winced, already nostalgic for the time when my nipples had been an erogenous zone.

Eb blinked, and then there was a grin on his face a mile wide. I swear I saw water standing in his eyes. "Well, I'll be—" He shook his head. "Ain't it just like you, Hess? You'll have to give me the tale over breakfast."

"Gladly." Both Eb and Marcone were looking at me expectantly. Right. Eb wasn't going to let Marcone past his threshold before he knew who he was; we'd only gotten this far because, flatteringly, the outer wards were still set to know me. "Uh, sir, this is John Marcone. He's a heartless criminal thug, but he had my back while I worked some things out with a wyldfae.

"Not a wizard," Eb said.

"Straight."

Marcone almost raised an eyebrow at that. I snickered.

"Marcone, this is Ebenezar McCoy, my teacher," I said. "Sir, Marcone will undertake to abide by the laws of hospitality. That means no strong-arming, threats, or snooping around, Marcone. You pull any of your shit with him, I will take you apart with my bare hands."

"I promise to behave myself. Wizard McCoy, it's both a surprise and an honour to meet someone Wizard Dresden holds in such high esteem," Marcone said, recovering his aplomb.

Eb eyed him measuringly. "Best come in then," he allowed, stepping back to let us through.  
__ __ __

I woke up disoriented and not knowing why. I was in my room, in my own bed, and all of Eb's wards were quiet. There was too much light. I groaned and rolled over to bury my face in the pillow, and every muscle in my body screamed.

There was something...I panted through the pain; something smelled terrible. Like smoke and sweat and...brimstone? I curled around my aching stomach, which felt like I'd maybe swallowed a stick of dynamite last night. My knees came up too far.

Oh.

_Oh._

Memory came rushing back, and I pushed myself upright, ignoring my abused body's protests. Eb was sitting in the room's only chair, the one behind my old desk. He was holding a bundle wrapped all in a sheepskin blanket, rocking it a little, almost unconsciously.

"Morning, Hess."

"Timezzit?" I asked muzzily. Yeuch. My mouth tasted horrible, too.

"Late afternoon, actually. You want to tell me what's going on now, or you want a wash first?"

Stars, Eb's wood-heated bath. The last hot water I'd had regular access to in my adult life. Eb saw the look on my face and chuckled. "Wash first, then. I take it I shouldn't be expecting any other visitors."

I shook my head. "No. Just had to get out of Dodge in a hurry." I swung my legs off the bed. "She asleep?"

Eb nodded. "Been giving her sheep's milk. Surprised the caterwauling didn't wake you; seems to have inherited someone's big mouth."

I stood cautiously and wobbled over to look at them. In this light, I could see Maggie's skin was a little darker than mine, although not as burnished as Hawk's. No sign yet that she'd inherited my somewhat beaky nose, but I had a vague idea that you couldn't really tell about things like that for several years. Right now, she looked tiny and delicate and perfect, although objectively I knew most babies look more or less alike.

It was strange to think that someday this round-edged little thing would be a walking, talking member of the human race. It was even stranger to think that less than twenty-four hours ago she'd been _inside_ me. I rubbed my flaccid stomach: that was going to take some getting used to. I wondered if I could fit into my pants again.

"You did good, Hess," Ebenezar told me in a peculiarly gentle voice, and I had to bite my tongue hard to keep the tears from welling up. Oh, good: more hormones. "I'm proud of you."

I extended one finger to trace the curve of Maggie's sleeping face but didn't quite touch her. My hands were still filthy. I cleared my throat. "Better get cleaned up."

Eb nodded. "You go ahead. I've got things under control here."

"Thank you, sir."  
__ __ __

In the bath house, I threw some more wood on the fire and lowered myself into the big, barrel-like tub. The hot water hurt like lemon juice on a paper-cut, but I continued doggedly until I was completely submerged. I sat for a short eternity, soaking the stiffness out of my muscles before even attempting to wash the dirt off.

I felt almost human afterwards. Wrapping myself in a towel, I went to scrounge up some clothes. A pair of jeans left over from my apprenticeship did not button, and barely made it up over my thighs. Well, when I left Ebezenar's, I'd barely finished growing and bore a marked resemblance to my wizard's staff in profile. Almost ten years later, I was still pretty scrawny but had put on some muscle, if nothing else. I stole a button-down shirt from Eb; untucked, the tails just covered my gaping fly.

After a moment's consideration, I decided against putting my bra back on. First, it was rank and sweaty; second, my boobs were tender to the point of leaking and had been since I woke up. This eased off after I found Maggie and let her belly up to the bar. The leaky, not the tender. I was ravenous too, but didn't trust myself to hold Maggie one-handed. Once she'd finished, I reluctantly let Eb take her again and attacked my own plate.

Between mouthfuls, I told Eb how I'd ended up here with the criminal kingpin of Chicago. Eb cradled Maggie gently but easily, with far more confidence than I felt. Her eyes were drifting shut again.

"Well, so far as I know, your heartless criminal is still sleeping in the guest room," Eb told me as I got up to do the dishes.

"He's not _mine_ ," I replied automatically. Thought it was better than the occasional idiot who still thought _I_ was _his_.

Eb gave me an unreadable look, but changed the subject. "You heading back to Chicago, then?"

"Shit, that reminds me. I need to call some people before they kill me." Between Murphy, Michael, and Charity, I doubted there would be enough of me to go around. The flexible nature of time in the existence of a wizard had been much less of a big deal when there hadn't been all these _people_ in my life.

"You know where the phone is," Eb said. He cleared his throat. "You know, Hess, I could look after the child. She'd be safe here with me. You too, if you wanted."

"I...don't know what to say, sir." My hands in the soapy water stilled. "It's very generous of you to offer."

"I could hardly do less for my great-granddaughter than I did for her mother."

My mouth fell open. I spun around, still holding a frying pan, splashing water everywhere. It took me a minute to find my voice.

"I'm...sorry. Your...what, sir?"

"Margaret was my daughter, Hess," Eb said gently.

And that was about when the yelling started. But I wasn't used to playing Don't Wake the Baby, so that sort of derailed my tirade; and then Marcone came in—hell's bells, just what I needed. My friendly neighbourhood eavesdropping mob boss. Who was staring at me. Like I didn't get that enough.

I escaped the field of fire and, going for the less perilous option, called the Carpenters to let them know Maggie and I were all right, and so they could tell everyone else to stop freaking out, too. I got Charity, who told me Michael was sorry for not picking me up, but he'd had to go smite something in Texas. The mind boggles.

She'd tried my office phone, then apparently loaded up the minivan with all the munchkins and come herself when she couldn't reach me. She must have got there just after Marcone and I had hot-footed it into the Nevernever. Which she couldn't believe I'd done, see what came of this kind of life? et cetera ad nauseum.

Michael was on his way back now; he'd been planning on breaking in Missouri overnight. Seemed like god was as bad a creepy stalker as John Marcone. I wondered if this meant we should expect demons on the way.

__________  
[1]好亥不見 (hăo jiǔ bú jiàn): Long time, no see. Our English greeting is actually a calque of this Chinese phrase.

In case anyone was wondering, I took Susan Rodriguez's name as an homage to Susan Silverman, girlfriend to Robert B. Parker's Spenser. Since there is no good male version of the name Susan unless you want to go the Johnny Cash route, I instead borrowed the name of Spenser's other sometimes-helper, Hawk. Not that if Hawk Rodriguez ever shows up he'll be a two-metre tall black boxer with shady morals and dubious fashion sense; I just needed a name.

For those of you not up on your female magicians: Margaret is of course Margaret LeFay, Harry's mother. Dorothy Dietrich is one of the world's greatest escape artists, frequently compared with Houdini (Bullet catch: Dietrich wins). She's also a stage magician and psychic debunker. Ellinor Redan was the first female member of the Society of American Magicians in the nineteenth century. Dell O'Dell, whose proper name was I think also a variant of Eleanor, was known as the "Queen of Magic" and pioneered televised magic in the fifties. Her trademark was witty banter.


End file.
